President Obama wants to work with Republicans on health care reform. “I am going to be starting from scratch,” he says, “in the sense that I will be open to any ideas that help promote” controlling health care costs and making health insurance more widely available.
As it happens, many of the worst ideas are in the legislation Obama supports. Republicans have embraced some of the best ideas, but also some of the worst.
”Best Ideas”
”Tax reform:” The president is right: the tax code inadvertently drives health care costs higher. But the solution is not to a new tax on health insurance that would hit union, older, female, and small-business workers hardest. The solution is to give those workers the largest effective tax cuts by changing the tax code so that workers control the money that employers now use to purchase health coverage